Why The Age Of Quantum Computing Is Nearer Than You Think

Trevor Quirk reports in the Christian Science Monitor that new research at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics shows quantum computing beginning to flirt with practical technology:

Tech-buffs, investors, IT industrialists, and boffins alike eagerly await the day when the science of quantum computing yields practical technology. Physicists of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), recently published research that, they believe, has brought that pivotal day closer.

For many years, physicists have sought to create an information network far superior to today’s by exploiting quantum phenomena. The team of German researchers have constructed the first vital component of such a network: a link between two atomic nodes over which information can be received, sent, and stored using a single photon. Successful exchanges of information recently took place in Garching, Germany, between two MPQ labs connected by a 60-meter fiber-optic cable. Though only a prototype, this rudimentary network could be scaled up to more complex and distanced quantum networks. The team reports their research in Nature.

The idea of quantum computing was introduced by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1982. The essential unit of classical computing, the bit, is binary. Like a light switch, it’s either on or off, 1 or 0. The quantum bit, by contrast, can be 1, 0, or a mix of both states – this last state being like a flipped coin that’s still spinning in the air.

The usefulness of this extra dimension seems, at first pass, more confusing than anything else, but it actually creates an new opportunity to represent data…

Convinced that this is where computation will go in the future. Interesting thing is – a quantum computer is quite possibly interfacing between 2 or more probable realities, possibly even alternate worlds – so they may be used one day as the first active communication between alternates, as we and n2 (alternate probable world) are effectively using the same computer. (already wrote a story about this actually).